


After Nine O'Clock

by only_freakin_donuts



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/M, no this wasn't inspired by taylor swift, why would you ask
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:55:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29924796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/only_freakin_donuts/pseuds/only_freakin_donuts
Summary: Alexis Karev has always known her parents didn't love each other. Not the way her dad loves the pretty lady in the photographs.
Relationships: Alex Karev/Jo Wilson
Comments: 10
Kudos: 33





	After Nine O'Clock

**Author's Note:**

> ✨"But if God forbid fate should step in  
> And force us into a goodbye  
> If you have children some day  
> When they point to the pictures  
> Please tell them my name"✨

Alexis got not only her name from her father, but her love of photographs too.

He brought two photo albums with him, when he came from wherever he came from. (“Washington,” Mommy told her, pointing to the state on the globe in their kitchen. “I grew up there, Nana still lives out there. It rains a lot.”) 

One photo album had a lot of pictures of him and Mommy, when they were younger. Mommy had long hair in some of them, and no hair at all in others. Other pictures had their friends in them, one of the pictures was even identical to one of the ones Mommy had on the fireplace- her, and Daddy, one lady with curly black hair, a lady holding a shaggy dog, and a man with blue eyes and a big smile. Mommy had one of them two on the fireplace, too. (“Those are my friends,” she’d said before. “I learned how to be a doctor with them.” And about the man with the blue eyes, she’d say, “He was my best friend. He’s up in Heaven now, he’s making sure we’re okay. I think he’s done a pretty good job of that so far, because I’d say we’re pretty okay.”) 

And then the second album. Mommy wasn’t in it at all, and Daddy looked older, more like he does now. Almost every single one of the photos had a pretty, brunette lady in them- in some of them her and Daddy were even kissing and she was definitely wearing a wedding dress. Daddy was smiling so big, and so was the pretty lady. 

So immediately Alexis wanted to know who the pretty lady was, and why she made her Daddy look so happy. Where was she now, and could she come here, make Daddy smile like that now? He smiled at her and Eli, sure, but not like that. He definitely didn’t smile at Mommy like that. He didn’t really smile at Mommy at all.

Now was her chance. She was supposed to be asleep, Eli was, and Daddy was sitting in the study with that photo album- that one specifically, the one with the pretty lady. Now was her time to ask about her. 

“Hey, princess,” Daddy greets her, noticing her standing in the doorway. “Can’t sleep? You want some, uh, you want some hot chocolate?”

She nods, and he nods back. “Okay, you stay here, and I’ll go put the kettle on, okay?”

And in the meantime, she flips through those pages again, looking again at the photos of her daddy and his bride, his bride that wasn’t Mommy. His bride that made him smile. 

Just like Alexis had moments before, Alex lingers in the doorway now with a mug of cocoa in each hand. A sigh rises from his chest. Here in the living room, late at night, were two pieces of his heart he never thought would connect– his daughter, and Jo. His daughter, in her pink footie pajamas and wet hair, kicking her feet out as she sits with his wedding album in her lap, her finger tracing the pictures of his… his Jo. His Jo, tucked away in a corner for him, so that her memory couldn’t hurt him. It still hurt him, though.

Alex doesn’t say anything when the moment passes and he moves towards the couch, putting the mugs on the side table and sliding into place beside her. He had worked with kids for years now, but it was different when it was _his_ kid; he was never sure just what to say to her, or how to say it. It felt like there was a language barrier between the two of them. 

Good thing it never seemed to phase Alexis, though. “Who’s that?” she asks simply, pointing to a face in a photo.

She’s actually pointing at Arizona. That gets a smile out of him. “Her name is Arizona, like the state,” he says. “She was my teacher, she taught me how to be a good doctor.” _And way more than that._

“And that?” 

“That’s April, she helped plan the wedding. It wouldn’t have been half as pretty without her.”

“So it _was_ a wedding!” Alexis exclaims. “And she _was_ your bride.” 

They both look at a photo of Jo now. “Yeah, she was,” Alex says. “She was my bride. Her name is Jo.” 

“Jo,” Alexis repeats. It sounds funny in her tiny timbre. “Isn’t that a boy’s name?” 

“Girls can have boy names,” Alex tells her. “Her name was Josephine, actually, but that’s so many letters. I don’t know all those letters.”

“Yes you do!” she laughs. “You’re a _doctor!_ You have to be _smart_ to be a doctor!” 

“Really? Man, I must do a good job of pretending then.”

Alexis laughs, and Alex takes in that smile on her face. It doesn’t last long before her intuition takes back over. “Is Jo a doctor too?” 

“She is,” Alex nods. “She’s _definitely_ smarter than me, no doubt about it. And definitely prettier than me.” 

Alex looks to Alexis, taking in her scrunchy little face. “Yeah,” she agrees. “Yeah she is prettier than you.”

“You know she’s one of the prettiest girls I know,” Alex admits. “You’re one of them too, of course.” 

“And Mommy?”

Of course she’s asking– she’s asking in that way that every child who wants her parents to be together forever asks. It isn’t the same way that kids who’ve always grown up with both their parents, and a big house, and a dog, ever ask. Alex knows the tone, he remembers hearing it in his sister when they were kids, and heck he probably used it once or twice too. Every kid wants their house to be a castle and their parents to be the king and queen; especially girls, ‘cause then they got to be the princess. And every kid deserves that.

That’s why he was here, for God’s sake. He was here to make that dream happen for his kids, because it far from happened for him, and he knew it never happened for Izzie either. And besides, kids went to bed at, like, nine o’clock, then the curtains closed and he could take his costume off and just be a regular guy who had a life outside of the charade. If an off-stage romance developed? Well, that was a bonus.

But here’s the thing, it was past nine o’clock and his favourite little audience member, one of the two that the show was devoted to, was still watching with wide, glittering eyes. So, on with the show.

“Obviously your Mommy’s one of them too,” he replies, him and his grin not missing a beat. “She’s like- did you know she used to be an actual model? That’s how pretty she is. She’s the full package, she saves lives for a living, she can cook, and she’s beautiful. Not to mention, she’s the reason you and your brother exist, so like…. what more could I ask for?” 

“But what about Jo?” Alexis asks, her voice whining just a little bit. “Where’s she now?” 

“Well she’s back in Seattle. She still works at the hospital I used to work at, and your mom too. She’s okay.”

“Why did you get married with her?”

In the slew of questions, neither of them had noticed the front door swing open and the queen of the castle kick off her shoes and hang up her coat. Alexis’ face lights up when she spots her in the doorway of the living room. She appears just in time to fill the silence that Alexis’ question left in its wake, because Alex wasn’t sure how to answer her without completely breaking character. It was so sad that he had to live his life in acting metaphors. 

“What are you still doing up, munchkin?” she asks, accepting a hug that comes with the smell of strawberry shampoo.

“I couldn’t sleep, so Daddy made me hot chocolate and we looked at his pictures. We were talking about Jo, his bride.”

“Oh,” Izzie nods along. She meets Alex’s eyes for a brief second, before her sole focus returns to her daughter. “You have a hot chocolate moustache, silly. You need to wash your face and brush your teeth before you go back to sleep. Should we go do that?”

“Can you tuck me in?”

“Of course I can. Say goodnight to Daddy.”

Alexis clambers into his lap and wraps her arms around his neck. “Night, Daddy. Can we look at more pictures tomorrow?” 

“Sure we can,” he agrees, a thin, wan smile on his face. “See you in the morning, I love you.”

_I love you, that’s why I’m doing all this._

The look on Izzie’s face as she carried Alexis off to bed had said _we’re not done here,_ and sure enough he’d only had a few moments to recover before she was back in the living room, scary with silence.

“Are you mad?” he asks. Truth be told, they hadn’t a true fight yet, not since he’d been here. They could’ve had so many, old and new, and yet they just never seemed to get the words out. Tonight felt like a fine night for a fight though, good as any. 

She’s got her hands on her hips, tongue in front of her teeth, pacing lightly. “It’s not– I’m not _mad–”_ she says, even if her body language states otherwise. “I’m just wondering what the chain of events was, that led to me coming home to find you sitting here with our daughter asking why you married another woman and knowing that other woman by name.”

“I had the wedding album out and she looked through it, when I went to make us hot chocolate. She has a right to be curious about where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing.”

“She’s _five_ , Alex!” Izzie yells, as if she has to remind him. “She’s in kindergarten, she doesn’t need to be concerned with your life back in Seattle!”

“It’s not _my life back in Seattle,_ Iz, it’s just my life!” Alex yells back. “And Jo is a huge part of that!” 

“You didn’t _have_ to leave her,” Izzie reminds him. Her voice is much quieter now, more vulnerable. “You made your choice, and it was _us._ ”

“So that means I can’t look back?”

“I don’t want it to live in the back of my brain, the thought that I’m always going to be second best to her. The thought that one day you’re going to leave and go back to her.” 

“Jesus, Iz, I’m not gonna freakin’ do that,” Alex groans. “What would the point of that be? Then I’ve come into their lives only to break their hearts eventually? I’d never do that, c’mon. You _know_ I’ll never leave them.”

“Even if you’re miserable here?”

A pause. They can both read between the lines. Alexis said it earlier, you need to be smart to be a doctor. Alex said he wasn’t, but he’s a good liar. Clearly. 

“I’m not miserable here. How can I be when I’ve got two kids who look at me the way they do?” 

“And when they’re not around?” 

_Stop making this harder, Iz. Stop asking questions you already know the answers to._

“When they’re not around,” Alex sighs, “we’re just us. And we’re good, we’re fine. You wanna watch Hannibal? I’ll make up popcorn, get the last of the hot chocolate? We’re fine, Iz. We don’t have to be in love after nine o’clock.”

She shrugs, softening up. “Alright, but only because I really want to know what happens. Let me go get changed.”

Alexis runs back to her bed before her Mommy comes down the hall. She pretends to be asleep when her Mommy peeks in to check on her. This secret can never get out, she’ll have to hold onto it really, really tightly. Her parents can’t know that she peeked behind the curtain, she saw them without their costumes on. 

It was forever in her mind as the day she realized her parents didn’t love each other. As she got older, that sounded less and less sad to her, because it wasn’t that they fell out of love– it wasn’t that their happy home had crumbled, it wasn’t the beginning of the end or the first of many fights she heard them have. Truth be told, they fought next to never, at least not when she or Eli were around. They were damn good actors. And even if that off-stage romance never blossomed, they were friends, and they supported each other like friends do. They made a life that was beautiful, and it wasn’t all fake. She could say with confidence that her parents did not love each other, before or after nine o’clock, until death did them part.

Dad went first. She was putting the finishing touches on her Masters thesis as she was on the flight back into Kansas, having received the calm, somber call from Mom on Tuesday morning saying the time had finally come. She’d stayed out in Boston as long as she possibly could to try and get this thesis out of the way, so she’d have less to worry about at the funeral and in the days after, when she’d have to watch out for Mom. She watches her carefully, as the people that have gathered in their corner all her life come to say their final goodbyes to her father. What a man he was.

One of the last faces she sees at the wake looks instantly familiar, even with age. Her features are the same, and she’s still just as beautiful as she was years ago. 

“You’re Jo,” Alexis says, no hesitation in her voice. She turns around, facing her father’s casket, lifting the pocket of his suit jacket and retrieving something she’d slipped in there, plucked carefully from his beloved photo album. “You’re the bride in the photographs. You’re the woman my dad loved.” 

Jo never expected Alex’s daughter, now a grown woman, to recognize her and know her name. Her lips spread into a thin, wan smile, even though she’s sad. It looks like the one Alexis had seen on her dad’s face for so many years. It came with mourning, she supposed. And it quite possibly never went away. “You must be Alexis.”

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” they both say in unison.

**Author's Note:**

> Haaaaaaaa my hand slipped. Thanks you @herdiamonds for the beta read and the kick in the ass last night.


End file.
